Why QE Is Not Working...

That was the headline at Zero Hedge yesterday. I won’t opine on their
analysis, but I will just say this: the reason why QE doesn’t
work as it’s being implemented is because the transmission
mechanism is entirely flawed. Why is this? I explained this years ago, but a more
succinct answer will suffice.

The way QE works is just like all monetary policy. The Fed
alters the amount of reserves in the banking system and alters
the demand for credit. But the big difference between
altering the Fed Funds Rate and implementing QE is that they
manipulate prices in setting the FFR. That is, the Fed sets
the price of overnight loans by SPECIFICALLY naming the price of
the loans. This has a dramatic impact on the banking system
and the profitability of loans. But QE has been implemented
in an entirely different manner. It’s been enacted not by
setting a price, but by naming a quantity (like, “we’re buying
back $600B of US t-bonds”). So the effect is that banks
sell bonds in exchange for reserves, interest rates aren’t
altered all that much and the private sector ends up with little
change to its balance sheets (QE is a simple swap of assets that
doesn’t alter the net financial assets of the private sector).

And because QE works primarily through the lending channels (as
monetary policy always does) it hasn’t had much of an impact.
There are a few other side effects of QE (like portfolio
rebalancing, wealth effects and mythical psychological effects on
economic actors), but the big factor is that it doesn’t induce
more lending (because it doesn’t have a transmission mechanism
through which it makes credit more attractive – not to mention,
in a balance sheet recession, consumers are already shunning
credit), but it also doesn’t alter the net financial assets of
the private sector. So the net result – QE just doesn’t do
much. It is, as I said many years ago, “the great monetary
non-event”.